


a mixed bag

by unstuckintime



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: AU, Character Study, Gen, Internalized Transphobia, Mentions of Roman/Tabitha, One Shot, Roman Roy Character Study, Trans Male Character, Trans Roman Roy, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26147425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unstuckintime/pseuds/unstuckintime
Summary: Roman is trans. And no, he doesn’t want to talk about it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TW: for transphobia, internalized and otherwise, self-loathing, mentions of self-harm, crude descriptions of gender confirming surgery. basically if you’re triggered by someone hating their transness, tread carefully. If you want specific warnings, just let me know! 
> 
> a one-shot, because I feel trans Roman in my bones. Also semi-AU with the Tabitha stuff! if anyone wants me to continue this, I have a few ideas so just lemme know! otherwise, enjoy!

-

It’s just that—well, Roman sees it when his dad looks at him. Sometimes. No, scratch that, _most_ of the time. The begrudging tolerance that hangs in the air between them like a particularly foul fart, his dad’s face saying _I’m continuing to indulge this little fancy of yours. Okay?_ and it makes Roman want to scream and break shit—break someone’s face, break his own face, knock his teeth out with his knuckles. And he might. He _could_ , that’s what matters. 

There’s a traitorous whisper in the back of his head that tells him he’s mutilated himself, mutilated his ‘precious’ body. Chasing a pipe dream, playing pretend. The voice belongs to his dad, because of course it does. It has his inflection, his rumbling baritone. But then again—the voice has been rattling around Roman’s skull so long it has to belong to Roman, too. Roman’s voice, Logan’s voice— none of it fucking matters, because Roman doesn’t give a shit. So he cut his tits off. So what? They were his (objectively stellar, though painfully unwanted) tits, and it was his fucking prerogative. If he wanted to cut all his limbs off next and join the circus, that would be his choice, too. It’s none of their business.  


It’s really fucking not. 

And— while he’s on the subject—Shiv and Kendall are great about it, the dirty fucks.  Roman remembers being seventeen, his hair freshly shorn, smashing a glass on the floor and screaming at them, “I’m a fucking boy, okay? I’m a fucking boy!” 

Shiv hadn’t even removed her sunglasses. “Alriiiight,” she’d drawled. Kendall had looked between them once and then nodded mutely.

They were perfect with the new pronouns. Shiv refrained from calling him his chosen name until one day she’d suddenly said, “Roman,” offhandedly, like she’d said it a million times, and beckoned him over to look at a dirty picture in one of the library books. She’d never slipped up once.  Kendall called him “little bro” and “bud” with annoying regularity. This was the one thing they had ever given Roman, and he _hated_ them for it. Their kindness was somehow more fucking maddening than anything else might have been.

He just hadn’t expected it. Roman had thought they’d mock him, or roll their eyes—that they’d begrudgingly _tolerate_ him, too. After Shiv called him “Roman” for the first time, he’d locked himself in a linen closet and scream-sobbed into a clean white towel.

Roman just...he wants. He wants to be taken seriously, and when he is he can’t stand it. He’s not a real person. He’s just twenty neuroses stacked on top of each other in a tailored suit.  Everything hurts and he’s tired and his thigh has weird spots of thickened skin from all the needles he’s jabbed into it over the years. Moron _. Moron_. 

“You know what’s so fucked up about you?” Tabitha had said, halfway out the door and cool as a cucumber.

“Fuck you,” Roman slurred. Some of the ice inside him was chipping off and crashing down into the watery depths of his (painfully wanted) chest. 

“Your eyes say _love me love me love me_ and then when anyone tries, your mouth says fuck off.”  


“You’re fucking delusional.” Roman’s hands weren’t working right. 

“Figure your shit out,” Tabitha went on, as if she hadn’t heard him ( _had_ she heard him?). She’d shaken her head, her glossy hair streaking across her face and sticking to her mascara-dark eyelashes, imperious, always. “Just, settle on one message, okay? Because they’re seriously mixed right now.”  And then she’d stepped out and was gone. 

After, Roman sat in the shower with his hands over his face. When he got out, he peered at his eyes in the steam-resistant mirror. They didn’t look like they were saying anything. They just looked sad.

-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like if Roman ever actually talks about his feelings everything is going to come out in a huge tsunami-sized rush.
> 
> This chapter is a lot more stream of consciousness-y than the last one because why not
> 
> Thanks to everyone who’s left kudos!!

They were always asking him back then: could he explain it? Could he explain it again, in a way they might understand? And what could Roman say—“Imagine if up was down, left was right, but only to you.”  Logan shaking his head, looking helplessly at their mother and muttering sotto voce: “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” Roman’s mother clucking her tongue chidingly, crooning:“Dear, could you perhaps be a _touch_ more coherent?”   


Roman remembers Kendall—sweet, wincing, knock-kneed Kendall—finding him in his room, or the garden afterwards, sitting down next to him and whispering “I don’t get it man, and I never will. But I support you one hundred percent.” 

Roman never understood what was so hard to get:  Kendall tapping on the bars of the kennel, his face clean of emotion like he’s staring in at a science project, Roman’s heart juddering like a motor turning over, the lightning flash of fear cracking the words ‘ _can he tell_?’ across his mind. The time Roman fell out of a tree and laid on the grass, staring up at the sun, nobody even knowing he was outside. Seeing his father shave. His hands. The way a woman zipped herself into a dress, slowly and then all at once. Not knowing the face in the mirror but recognizing himself in the street, a man passing. Looking at two identical jackets at the coat check and knowing: this one is mine, this one isn’t.

It’s too big and too small to ever say. It’s just a fact. It’s being compressed and then suddenly expanding, like the Grinch’s heart. Spirit soul, whatever it is, Roman doesnt care. It’s there, within him, a molten core. Foundational. 

How can Roman explain it? Working backwards, tear down a house piece by piece—roof, walls, wood. Haul everything away until all that’s left is the land.

They should have said “it’s a boy!”   
  
What the fuck is Roman supposed to do with that?  


_-_


End file.
